Passion Play

There have been many a great changes occurring.  I wanted to do a video about it but I never got around to it.  Oh well.  Maybe next time.  I'll actually be having a lot of time to be doing these updates from here on out.  Now only if I had something to write about.

And now I do!

I'm writing this as I sit in a cushy brown chair in a Starbucks here in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago with the Apple logo glowing behind the screen into which I'm staring, just like all of the great writers of the world.  This Starbucks is located half a block from a complex which houses an LA Fitness gym on its top floor.  I work at this gym now.

Say what?!

Yes, I am working in a gym now.  It's not in the position for which I am qualified, no.  So here's what happened.  I get a random phone call a month or so ago asking me if I am interested in becoming a personal trainer at LA Fitness.  I say sure, let's give it a shot.  I go in for an interview that day.  I meet with a couple guys and discuss my qualifications, and I am very honest.

I say to them, look.  I have this certification, sure.  However, I would not feel very comfortable working with people in a person training capacity just yet, as I think my W.I.T.S certification course was kind of a load of haberdashery. I explained the course instructor was never prepared, seemed to not know what she was doing, and didn't really have us do a lot of hands on training.

They appreciated this honestly and told me I ought to start out in a different position.   This position is called a personal training counselor.  They explained the role to me, how I could work to be comfortable at personal training, and I accepted, even though I was a bit confused as to what this position actually entailed.

Later that evening, I received a phone call being offered the position, and I accepted.  And that's when things started to get a wee bit confusing.  I figured this would be a full time position, and so I could work with it to do this gym position as well as keeping some hours at the current gig, bartending at the Twisted Vine, the lovely wine and whiskey bar that took me under their wing when I was but a baby to the exciting whirlwind of Chicago city life.  So to get all of that situated, I came in for my first day of work to LA Fitness in early November.

We discussed my availability, which at the time was a November schedule at the bar that was written in late October, for the entire month of November.  At a bar with 3 employees.  No time off, no switching shifts, no quitting without notice (I didn't want to be a dick), and thusly, no gym job until my schedule cleared up.  He presented to me what the hours would look like.  6 days a week, with 3 of those days being there for about 11 hours, with a 4 hour break in the middle.  Meaning no time for two jobs.

So I put it off.  I was told when my schedule cleared, I would have a position at LA Fitness waiting for me.  I was told that sometime around November 13, and with a birthday weekend coming up, my birthday being November 16, I decided to put off dealing with that work junk, and made the commitment to report my final days at the bar to my boss when I came into work that following Tuesday.  Before that, I called LA Fitness to make sure he would keep his word that I had a position there should I decide to quit my current bartending gig.  It was confirmed.  So Tuesday came (my birthday weekend was great by the way), and it was consistently busy.  Never a dull moment.  Never a moment to breathe.  Never a moment to discuss the end of days with my boss.

Then came Wednesday.  It was a day that started with lots of busy work involving some side project my boss had been working on regarding Christmas ornaments and lots and lots packaging popcorn -- the fluffy stuff in packages.  My co worker would come in 2 hours after I had arrived, and committed that I would disclose the notice before she came in.  And so I did.  It went something like, "Hey, gotta tell ya somethin!" And then the blabbering of news came out, and the reaction received was an unexpected one.  Few words, mostly silence.  In fact, it was nearly 2 weeks of silence thereafter, an appropriately wintery chill, up until I finished my term at the bar, my last couple days there completely void of my boss, my friend who I had made since my walking into the once warming establishment.

It was strange to me, yet not surprising that he decided to be absent that day due to many different factors I won't bore you with here.  But so how he decided to end it, and thus it was.

I called LA Fitness about the position, and there were a few concerning hiccups.  The guy I was in contact with wasn't there for a few days.  When I came back, he told me to come in the next morning.  Then he called me back saying instead coming in for an interview with a guy named Al.

Heart racing.  Blood pressure rising.  What did he mean an interview?  I had already done the hiring paperwork.  I filled out those forms.  I was given his word on the position.  I was offered a full time position and I had quit my job to make this transfer, from the less than stellar world of bartending, late nights, no social life, and lots of bitch work, to a field in which I could thrive and put my actual passions into play.

I went in for this so-called "interview" with Al.  One of the first things he asked me was a question about whether I'm looking for full time or part time work.  I began with, "So I'm a little confused..."  I think he was too, be he recovered by telling me to chill out and that he just needs to meet everyone before their officially on board.  I think there were some mistakes made in this little process that scared and stressed the ever-living bejeezus out of me, but all was well in the world.

So that's where I am now.  And I know now more about the position.  Essentially I am selling personal training, in itself involves a bit of personal training from me to the potential clients.  So it's a step in the right direction.  But it's still sales.  That's never been in my best graces, but I will try my best until I make the position what I want for it to be.

And now I have that schedule, the unusual one where I have 4 hour lunch breaks.  I'm on one of those lunch breaks.  I had my food, and came into Starbucks, and I brought my computer with me.  So I can sit here at this Starbucks, like all the great writers of the world, and deliver you a much delayed continuation of my adventures since moving from Seattle.

Gym and Journeys

I've been gaining a bit of weight.  But no, in the good way.


A few weeks ago I was somewhere in the  11% range of body fat, but now that I've adjusted my little body fat reader to my current weight gain (to like 156 lbs or something) it tells me I'm at a comfortable 9%.

This top hangs on me, 

but one day, it will be tight...

Some notes on how I see my progress... well, I think my shoulders are coming in nicely and love the way they look in a tank top.  However, my pecs are growing unevenly.  I've heard to use dumbbells for presses when that happens, so that's what I've been doing.  No barbell bench presses for me.  Hopefully that works out the issue, because having a left pec that's noticeably larger (to me anyway) ain't cute.

Yesterday was a chest/tri day at the gym, so today it'll be back to bis/lats.  I might go easy on those and also work shoulders more since I haven't done that in a good few days now.  I can't imagine anyone who reads this finds this at all interesting.  How can I spice up my fitness blog?  Tips and tricks?  I dunno.  I kind of have a routine so there's nothing really out of the ordinary.  But if a sex scandal comes up from the gym, I'll let you know.  Or maybe I'll start taking steroids and write very angry blogs about all the ugly people in my life.  That would be something different.  

Let's bring this blog full circle for the moment and talk a little more about Chicago life.

I went on an architecture tour a couple weeks ago.  Apparently it was the wrong tour... I mean, it was interesting, but it wasn't THE Architecture Tour.  Guess there's an architecture society or something?  No one told me about this, so I went with one that I found on Groupon.  It wasn't bad, but didn't blow my skirt up like I expected, as everyone always creams themselves when talking about the architecture tour... but to be honest, Chicago seems to be a city that overhypes absolutely everything (Market Days, anyone?) which makes me feel a little better about the horror stories people have about winter.

I pieced together a little panoramic photo from some shots I got out in the lake.  Chicago is pretty and has some impressive architecture, for sure.

Ideas From The Cloud

Feels like I should be more inspired to write, but it can often be tricky to come up with subject matter to write about.  I had taken some notes a week or so ago regarding my living situation, my roommate, and the overall hipster-chic feel of it all.  Then I realized that might be kind of boring.  But then I thought to myself, is posting nothing at all really a better solution?   Not really.

I use writing as a creative outlet.  I don't seem to have to many of those these days as I used to.  I loved to draw and doodle as a kid.  I did a lot of blogging (complaining about how stupid my parents were) as a pre-teen.  I did a lot of acting and musical theatre in high school.  After that, video blogging was something I enjoyed doing rather frequently.  Then I got into painting.  Last summer I bought a camera and have been enjoying learning the fine art of photography, taking inspiration from artistic photo websites and seeing if I can get an idea on how to replicate those shots.  Yet, I don't go out with my camera too much anymore.

Lately at works in times of ultimate lack of anything to do (which is rare -- Facebook is always at my fingertips) I have been known to spot a pad of paper and taken to sketching something silly on it.  I've always had a thing for drawing an eye, and then designing a creature, usually cat-like, around it.  But nothing really interesting.  So I feel like I have this intense need for a creative outlet in random parts of my life but I haven't felt like I've been all that great at what I've created.  In my defense, art is subjective.

I took a creative writing class in college and we had an assignment to submit a poem for the entire class to read aloud and critique it.  Poetry has never been my thing, so I used a poem that I was inspired to write when I was 18, during a summer I had spent in Alaska and I was stuck on a boat for 12 hours a day.  It was rhymey, about a relationship that faltered, all that expected, trite sort of bull.

It was submitted to the class and read aloud anonymously.  Everyone hated it.  No, like everyone.  Not a nice thing was said about it.  Well, until our instructor asked if the author wanted to come forth and defend his work, which I did, and a nice girl in the class declared, "Well I liked the rhyming," probably seeing my humiliation forming in my eyes and about to stream down my face.

It inspired me to write another poem.  It was a poem about how I personally believe art isn't 'good' or 'bad'.  It's a way for a certain person to express themselves and if not another single person on earth can read the emotion that went into that piece, so what?  If it meant something to the "artist", then at least one person got something out of it.  And it also defended my personal interest in having poems rhyme.

Then there was another, probably also seen as terrible, poem I wrote about how there are a lot of things out there that I find I am okay at, but nothing comes to mind of anything that I really, really excel at.  So that's sort of a downer, and do I still believe that?  Who knows.  I don't try to think about it.  I live my day to day life, which a lot of people may find uninspired and going from day to day just living and not trying to achieve anything.  Again, maybe true.  I always have an idea of what I'd like my life to be like, and somehow either there isn't an intense motivation to get to that point, or my excuse that it's hard to balance a job and school without any other outside help is actually a valid one.

It's a topic I hate to think about and don't discuss with many people, but I see those who are successful out there and they are typically the ones who come from supportive families.  Then on the flip side, I think ... but everyone I know seems to be more successful than I am.  And then I think, yet again, most people who don't come from supportive families and are sort of down and out on their luck seem to never leave the small town they come from.

This has really just been a post of my progressive thoughts as I wrote this.  Ramblings, really.  This post started out with an idea, one I visualize as sort of a foggy, less compact cloud of ideas, and the more I wrote, the firmer the message became in my head and I was able to focus on a few of those certain aspects.  It is at this point in the post that I will give it a title -- not that I had an idea at the beginning and titled it appropriately.  Let's make that much clear.

To be perfectly honest, there are a lot of things I wish I could write about, but I couldn't bring myself to stand up and declare those stories of my life at the risk of certain people finding them, reading them, and knowing exactly how I am feeling about certain situations.  That's what I have friends for I guess, but still... I don't know.  They don't get the full, reign-free let-my-ideas-flow whole of it.

Suppose I could write those elsewhere... and publish those perhaps I figure out if I'm still in need to hide my thoughts from those people, whether if it's from realizing I can have complete honesty with them, or if they will no longer be in my life in a way that I have to fear their judgement.

Best Defense

Today I made a purchase that was probably a smart move, but a purchase made that I didn't want to have to make, because it addresses in the front of my head that at certain times throughout my week, I may be in danger.

You know when you're not necessarily rolling in the dough, and you avoid looking at your bank account because if you can't see it, it's not real?  It's kind of like that.

Today I purchased some mace off of Amazon.

No, not that kind of mace.  As in pepper spray.  "Police grade" they call it.

Last night I was leaving work at midnight, and I was entering the Redline station at Addison.  I heard yelling and shouting inside as I entered, and this girl outside with a stroller said to me, "You might not want to go in there," but she seemed a little out of sorts/crazy so I went in anyway.  I couldn't see anything happening, but heard a lot of different people who forgot to use their inside voices.

I enter the train station, and behind the turnstiles is a large group of thuggish men, fighting, and with blood all over their clothes.  I checked my surroundings and there were $5 Footlongs from Subway thrown all over the ground, and also on the ground there were several puddles of blood, and spatterings around as well.

People seem to have trouble understanding what's going on in that photo, so know that it's all the ground, and the can there is a decal on the floor advertising Coors Light.  And that's some blood next to it.  Quite a bit of blood (scale is hard to make out in this photo -- sorry)

The neighborhood where I live seems relatively safe... but anything can happen anywhere.  I see troubling looking people all over Chicago -- the city that has surpassed New York City as the most violent in the nation.  That's a title not worth scoffing at.

The neighborhood in which I work has become, from what I've been told, more and more dangerous in the past year or so.  A bunch of undesirables have made their way from the south side and like to party it up in Boystown and cause all sorts of trouble with people walking along the street.  No fun.

So now I will be carrying mace with me, in my pocket, in my hand, as I walk from work to the train station late at night.  It worries me though.  I've never used anything like that.  If I'm confronted with someone with a weapon, will I actually take the risk to pull out the mace, aim it at their face, and press the button?  Too many thoughts would occur.  What if I miss?  What if they reach out to stab me while being temporarily blinded?  What if I'm not fast enough?  

What if I'm outnumbered?  It's a bit of peace of mind, I guess, since my only protection before this was holding my keys in my hand, and knowing I'm a ridiculously fast runner... but who's for sure that they're not faster?

It's something.  Probably a smart idea.  At least if I am confronted by someone, I have an option to defend myself and that's always a good thing.  Now, if I'm blindsided and punched in the face at random, that's something else.  I just want to avoid the blood in my veins spilling out into the open air and onto the surfaces surrounding me.  That would be totally uncool.

Progress Report

I'm sitting on the purple line right now, updating from my brand new iPhone 5s which I acquired yesterday. It's a beautiful piece of machinery about 7,500 times faster than my previous iPhone 4.  Now I'm looking forward to reading this post in about a year, when I'll be cursing how crappy and slow my iPhone is. Such is the life of technology!

So the purple line. My first time on it. Heading to Northwestern University to workout with a friend at their gym.  

Progress has been good. Been studying a lot on many different aspects of fitness and browsing the forums over at a reputable bodybuilding website. 

That's as of today.  Why is the chest so hard to build?  I want it big and I want it now!  

So that's going well. Everything else in the world is pretty much standard. I mean I could tell you the debacle it was on trying to obtain my new iPhone but it's really not that interesting. Mostly frustrating and I'm done venting about it because no one cares and the issue has been resolved. Anywho...

That's what's going on in my neck of the woods. What's going on in yours?

Worst Blogger Evaarrr!

I should really work on keeping up on this.  I wouldn't mind keeping it as a fitness log, which some might find interesting, some might not.  Who knows.  Who cares?  I don't need to categorize this thing... I'll write when I feel like writing.

On Saturday, a couple friend of mine and I took an epic road trip up to Saugatuck, MI.

It was pretty fun.  When we arrived, we realized that this place, which he had heard was a gay resort town, was chock-fulla heteros and families.  No bueno.  The gay resort there was booked solid, however, for some hardcore fetish party.  Interesting.  They were all confined to their resort and didn't venture out into town.  So all the gays in town were not only fetishists, but confined to a highly secured gay resort.  Lame.

We walked around town a bit, had a lunch in a crowded straight restaurant, and were all in a pretty defeatist mood.  We were about to head back to the city, do some wine tasting along the way, but decided to grab a Geocache (look it up) before heading out.  The closest one brought us back to the gay resort.  While there, we decided why not go ahead and grab a drink.

We spoke (flirted) with the bartender, he told us about the event, and said the bar, at least, would be open and pretty fun later in the evening.  He talked us into booking a room across the street -- where they have a pool -- and so we did.

We went swimming, later went out to dinner, got some alcohol, had a couple drinks, went to the bar, drank there, and met a lot of awesome people.  It led to a skinny dipping party in our outdoor hotel pool.  Awesome.

Whatever else happened stays in Saugatuck.

The next day we went to this awesome diner full of middle America people.  Out of shape, unattractive people who don't take care of themselves and go about every day life waiting for the days to pass until they are sent to the golden gates to meet their maker.  It was interesting to say the least.  Like somewhere they would go on an early episode of Roseanne or something.

We also went apple picking!

It was pretty adorable and now I have way too many apples and it didn't even cost me $5.

We did end up grabbing a geocache before leaving Michigan (because I want to find one in every state if possible!), which was in a beautiful area that kind of closed the book on summer in a way.  It seemed like things are about to slow down around these parts.

What's Going On

This update comes from my iPhone, so don't expect the usual great strides of poetic bloggery. 

Now, this is what has been going on. Still working out as much as possible (within reason) and I think I've been making pretty great strides.  Here's a photo I took last week. 

Legs are still a bit scrawny but the upper bod is coming along. 

Last weekend I was in DC. A friend I made at the bar works in travel and invited me along on a trip to DC. I had never been, so it was a pretty awesome experience.

I bought a Michelle Obama magnet as a souvenir. I kinda love it. 

That's about the short of it. Enjoying Chicago and all it has to offer. Friendships are developing nicely which is exciting. I might have more to say later. Next weekend I have plans to go to a gay resort town in Michigan, and then a gay theme park night at Six Flags the following weekend. It's gonna be a gay ole' time.